The Economy

Never be happy with what you have. Always bemoan what you don't have.

That's the American motto.

 

@BTExpress is one of the best examples of another fine American trait: The inability to see things other than those which directly affect him.

 

Because I wasn't feeling bad enough about our country, I took a drive down Main Street (literally, here in Ventura) then hopped onto Google Maps and reviewed the recently empty storefronts. By my quick count, in a mile and a half, 14 businesses had closed (or at least relocated). Even if half of them are simply hairdressers that consolidated or leasing agents who now work out of homes, that's still 14 landlords impacted, 14 utility bills and insurance agencies and pest control companies, etc. etc. no longer being paid monthly. I'm not so sure as a society we've completed yet come to grips with the economic pain we're seeing on Main Street, literally and figuratively.

 

We really have not, and half the population is unwilling to listen to the facts. We're on the up-slope of Covid blowing up again during cough and cold season, which will likely cause as much damage or more as the big wave in the summer. Utterly predictable, and it has been and warnings were issued - and disregarded, largely on partisan political lines.

It is going to require our society learning the way a puppy gets housebroken. Make a mess, get scolded so he knows he did something he shouldn't have, rub his nose in it so he knows what the trouble is, and then whack his butt with a rolled up newspaper to reinforce the idea that he shouldn't do it again.

The problem is that hundreds of thousands of dead people are a far worse punishment than a rolled up paper.

 

30,000

 

Thanks Biden!

 

So...

What did/does the government need to do to save small businesses?

Let everyone go maskless? Just business usual with unusual deaths?
Bail them out with massive loans, which will probably never get paid back?
Tell their lenders, landlords and utility companies to forgive payments for a year?

I have heard over and over that free market is best and small business do not want regulated at all, but now they want regulation?

Seriously? What's the freeking answer?

And many small businesses are killing it during COVID. You have a pizza place outside a big subdivision? Home improvement company? Landscaping company? Craft stores? Install pools? Install fences? Killing it.

 

I think we need to decide if small businesses are as important to American security as the $1 trillion F-35 fighter jet program; if they are, then the solution is pretty simple.

 

The answer is pay them to stay closed, but we will never do it.

 

But cutting that will end different jobs.

 

Funny enough this just popped up on teh twitters